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Saturday, February 5, 2011

Uncontacted Tribes

You might be thinking that the only things I think looking at are difficult things. The past two posts I've made about the hurt, lost, and forgotten in asylums have been a little heavy. I'll be returning to the heavy stuff--never fear--but today is something different.

Can you imagine that in over 100 places on this planet there are tribes of humans that have had minimal or no contact with modern human beings? No knowledge of Twitter, Facebook, mobile phones, credit cards, or home foreclosures? No democrats, no republicans, no knowledge of wikileaks (or Wikipedia)? These images literally took my breath away.

The world, which always seems like it is getting smaller, got exponentially larger for me the instant I clicked on the video and saw these people looking up into the sky at the plane that was passing by. They likely speak languages we don't know, pray to gods we are unaware of, have knowledge and wisdom we haven't thought of, and have social structures we've never thought of.

I'm taken by these images--I will look at them again and again. I'm curious about them--I'm curious about what they might teach us. At the same time, I hope we don't get too close. I hope for once in our history we don't overrun a people. I hope we don't think we know what is best and try to civilize the so called savages. I hope we don't steal their resources and their ways.

I hope we protect them. I hope we let them be. I hope we wait until they wish to be in contact with us. I hope we we can look back into our own past and do better.